How Precious Was That While
by the.goal.is.greatness
Summary: You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. [John Laurens x Alexander Hamilton]


**Title:** How Precious Was That While  
**Genre:** Romance / Angst / Fluff  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Alexander Hamilton x John Laurens  
**Spoilers:** N/A  
**Summary:** You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.  
**Word Count:  
****Warnings:** Historical AR? But taking place in the Broadway's _Hamilton_ timeline.

**Disclaimer:** _Hamilton_ is not mine. Summary is a quote by Alexander Hamilton written you, you guessed it, John Laurens.

**A/N:** I mean, I'm _sorry_ Founding Fathers?

* * *

Hamilton's life had many twists and turns, more in twenty years than men had in their entire lives, even in this time of war. His father leaving, his mother dying, his own illness, his guardian committing suicide. He had a long struggle out of poverty and obscurity on his native Nevis. It was hard and rough making his way to America, a country he had come to love dearer than his own.

It stood for everything he believed in. That anyone, even entire countries, if given the chance to grow, could become greater than their parents. A bastard could make a name for himself. A country could outgrow the bonds of its royal overseer. Hamilton wanted this young nation to have its freedoms with a tenacity and fervor that both surprised and invigorated him. It had become an immediate home to him and he loved her with all his heart.

He knew this chosen path of his life would he harsh, full of bloodshed and death, the way that a life of soldiering always was. He did not expect he would outlive a Revolution and that he could give his life for so noble a cause that was so little a thing to give.

But there were some turns one did not expect their life would take, not matter how accustomed one might be to the disarray of a nation in upheaval.

"I'm John Laurens." There's a flurry of introductions from several other patrons here in the bar, but one pair of blue eyes had knocked Hamilton sideways like he's been struck by a mallet. "Sorry, I've had a few too many Sam Adams, what was your name again?"

"Alexander Hamilton." He holds out his hand to shake the hands of the trio of men. "I think we're about to become fast friends."

* * *

He's never had friends before, so he can't say for certain if it is always this easy for people to become friends. He doesn't know if other people fall into friendships as easily as he falls asleep at night, if meeting another person is sometimes like finding a missing piece of themselves. He doesn't know if it always this easy.

But for Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens it is.

People who don't know where and when they met would swear they had known one another since infancy, so easy is their comradery and brotherhood. They trade jokes like soldiers who have fought side by side for years. They trade letters when they are parted more often than a married couple. They are more even than two halves of a whole: they are the same.

It is during one of their discussions about something near and dear to Lauren's heart that the subject of something _more _is tentatively put forth.

"I do not understand why the South is so blind to the fact that these Africans are people the same as you or I."

"Well, as an immigrant myself, perhaps a little more me than you, my dear Laurens," he says, hoping for a laugh.

John chuckles, as he had hoped. "Well, yes. But they are still humans, still deserving of rights and freedoms, just as we are fighting for ourselves. Doesn't it seem redundant to fight for freedom for one set of people in this country, while we condemn the rest?"

"Women are similarly subjected to rules that are beyond their means to change," Hamilton muses, thinking of his own mother, stuck in a marriage she could not legally leave herself. So here he was: a bastard.

Laurens slumps into a chair next to him, their knees almost brushing. "So white men have all the rights. Some country of the free."

"Well, white men minus the British."

"Pretty soon the people in charge will run out of people to exclude and will start making things up."

"No rights to men who aren't landowners," Hamilton jokes.

"No rights to men who haven't served in the militia."

"No rights to men under five foot five."

"No rights to men who aren't interested in marriage." Alexander blinks. At his expression, John shrugs. "It seems unfair to contemplate marriage when I'll very well die in the war. And even if I don't, neither slaves nor women have a say in who they marry. It is uncivilized."

"You are too patriotic, by half, John Laurens, to give up the fairer sex for liberty." Struggling for another lighthearted joke, he says, "The Ancient Greeks and Romans had ways around marriage. Perhaps our new country should base her romantic overtures on their example, the way we do with our system of governing."

He expects a chuckle, or at least a small smile, but he gets neither. What he gets is a long, blue-eyed stare that looks all the way into his soul. "I probably wouldn't have any right then, either."

Alexander watches him walk away, long after he's vanished from sight.

* * *

Hamilton dwells on that look, that statement, at every waking moment. It is his last thought before he falls asleep and his first thought as he awakens. He reads so deeply into those softly uttered words that he wonders if he'd imagined them. Laurens never brings it up again, so neither does he.

Until Laurens is staring down the business end of a pistol with Charles Lee at the other end all over some stupid slight Hamilton took on his general's behalf and he realizes that Laurens could _die_. He doesn't breathe for the entire duel, not until he's patted down John from shoulders to hips, not noticing his bewildered eyes, while Alexander frantically makes sure he isn't injured. He's in a haze as Washington rebukes him, in a daze as he walks from the general's office. He's barely there until he hears his own name called.

"Alexander?" He glances up to see Lauren's uncertain eyes. "Are you alright?"

"Am I – " He's flabbergasted. "Am I _alright_? John you could have _died_. And it – it would have been my fault." He's scrambling for the words to express how terrified he had been for his friend, how he hadn't thought before he spoke and that his rash words could have resulted in Laurens' death – "

"Alex – " John takes a few steps forward, until they're both hidden in the shadow of the manor, but Hamilton is still talking, for once a stammering and unsure mess with his words.

"It would have been so stupid, and it would have been my _fault_ and you – you would have been _gone _and – "

"Alexander." His name is quiet, but it echoes like a gunshot and Hamilton's mouth falls closed when arms brace against the wall around him, bracketing him in. "How silly of you to think a mere duel would kill me."

"But you – "

"I will _never_ leave you, Alex."

He's opening his mouth to dispute the futility of those words, when their life is so filled with danger, but there's a soft press of lips against his and it startles him into quiet stillness. It's unlike kissing any of the women he had wooed as a younger man, unlike his Eliza. John is slighter taller, so Alex has to tilt his head up to meet the motion, in a move as natural as breathing. John's broader shoulders cover him from view, but Alex isn't thinking about passerby's as he grips Laurens' lapels.

John pulls away from him with a soft sigh, and Alex is panting against his lips, trying to catch his breath, staring at him in equal parts shock and wonder. He grins, boyish and charming. "I suppose the Greeks were right about that, too."

And then he walks off, and Alexander watches him go, speechless for the first time in his life.


End file.
